Son of Aeacus by the Nereid Psamathe, and so half-brother to the sons of Endeis, Telamon and Peleus.1
Of the daughters of Nereus the old man of the sea, fair Psamathe was loved by Aeacus through the will of golden Aphrodite and bore Phocus — set in the catalogue beside silver-shod Thetis, who was subject to Peleus and brought forth lion-hearted Achilles.2
Apollodorus tells that after Endeis had borne him Peleus and Telamon, Aeacus lay with Psamathe, daughter of Nereus, who turned herself into a seal to escape his embrace; from that union came Phocus. His father Aeacus was reckoned the most pious of men, honoured even after death in the house of Pluto, where he keeps the keys of Hades.3
Because Phocus excelled in athletic contests his brothers Peleus and Telamon plotted against him, and the lot falling upon Telamon, he killed his brother in a match by throwing the quoit at his head; with Peleus' help he carried off the body and hid it in a wood. When the murder was detected, Aeacus drove both sons as fugitives from Aegina.4
In their folly the sons of Aeacus had slain their brother Phocus, and so settled far from Aegina in exile: Telamon dwelt in the Attic island, while Peleus departed and made his home in Phthia.5
The Aeginetans showed his grave beside the shrine of Aeacus, a barrow ringed with a stone basement and a rough stone laid on top. In their telling Telamon and Peleus drew Phocus into a pentathlon, and when it fell to Peleus to hurl the stone they were using for a quoit he struck Phocus dead; the sons of Endeis then boarded ship and fled, and Aeacus, refusing to let Telamon land, bade him plead his innocence from aboard ship.6
Pausanias adds, on the authority of the epic poet Asius, that to Phocus were born Panopeus and Crisus; their people made their home about Parnassus in the land thereafter called Phocis, and from Panopeus came Epeius, who built the wooden horse.7
In Ovid he is the youngest of Aeacus' three sons, who received Cephalus of Athens at the palace gate while Telamon and Peleus marshalled the men, and there, marvelling at the stranger's golden-headed javelin, drew from him the tale of its fatal cast. His blood Peleus still mourned long after, when, exiled and guilty of his brother's death, he believed the Nereid Psamathe had loosed a ravening wolf upon his herds in vengeance for her son.8
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the spine ignites as you read · hover a bond on the card — every mention of them lights in the story
